The New OPEC

Society faces the twin challenges of resource depletion and waste accumulation, increasing concerns to governments leading to increasing taxes for waste disposal restrictive legislation. Research in the area of renewable feedstock is of great importance today and represents one of the most promising research avenues from both environmental and economic perspectives, for industry especially given the pressures it is facing to improve its sustainability performance. Valorisation of multi-ton scale pre-consumer waste for the production of bio-derived marketable chemical, materials and fuels represents an interesting 2nd generation strategy in comparison to current 1st generation food supply chain waste management and re-use practices (landfilling, incineration, composting, AD). Industry and governments have been pushing for the substitution of current first generation by strategies which have a lower environmental impact and allow the recovery of valuable marketable products, helping the global move towards a zero waste bio-economy. This poster will cover the development of an integrated fast and low-temperature tunable microwave process for the conversion of citrus waste to several marketable products with direct applications in one simple step.